Sunshine Kid

The silence of death had been tense. It had pulled out uncertainty, tentativeness, and a blanket of rattling impatience. 

It ought to be, in all senses, a singular experience, designed for mortals and never to be retold unless as a lesson, or in a fable - a warning for those wanting a calmer afterlife to adhere to morality during their time on Earth.

To Harry, that silence - the encompassing white, the impatience, the state of being unsure had been painfully familiar.

Moments before Dumbeldore - in whatever form - had appeared at the odd, dream version of the train station, he had sat there much like he had used to sit in his cupboard after having woken up too early on a weekend morning.

The rumbling of his stomach, the balling of his small fists and pushing one leg off of his small bed, trying to decide what to do; satisfy the hunger and be yelled at later, or wait for Aunt Petunia to wake up so he would be let into the kitchen? 

It was the same waiting as a child for something, someone to come.

Harry’s sure that there’s something very telling about it all. He knows what his fear had been walking to his death: tangible maybe, and enormous, yes, but childish. He had only really wanted to know if it would hurt, but nothing else had seemed to matter. 

It was the same fear Teddy had felt when the first of his baby teeth started wiggling. The same fear Teddy had felt of falling as Harry tried to teach him how to ride a bike. Same as when he grazed his knee and Harry held a wand to it to heal it. Does it hurt? Does it hurt? Does it hurt, Harry? Does it hurt, Sirius?

Quicker than falling asleep.

—

The shop begins to resume its steady operating rhythm again, tired after the summer rush. Harry has Loic replace the special summer prices with the normal rates at the front of the store again, and begins cataloguing the items that have come in for repair the whole week.

It’s a Friday, and in order to actually get anything done the following Monday, he needs to organise everything, requires everything that needs to be done to be put in a list. Harry sits in the small office, scribbling and scribbling and scribbling on the parchment, the pen creaking against the rough paper. 

Eventually, he has what is admittedly an intimidatingly lengthy list, but at least he knows what he should do. He spells it to stick on the wall, and then collects his things. Next week will be a productive week for the shop, he promises to himself, and he’ll even try and finish some things earlier than when they’re due. 

The house is still messy when he walks through the fireplace and he exhales heavily upon seeing it again. He knows the kitchen is messy too which is why he sets down the bag of takeaway he’s brought with him on the coffee table, and has his dinner in the living room. 

The stairs have a sock on them, and a shirt is flung onto the railing. Both are Teddy’s. Harry leaves the sock where it is - he knows he’ll be mailed soon with a request to send it to Hogwarts. He collects the shirt to return to its place; Teddy had thrown it out of his trunk at the last minute, grumpily stepping out of his bedroom because Eugh - who still wears stuff like this. Really, Harry doesn’t see what is so wrong with it - it’s purple, and there’s a thick black lining along the collar and the short sleeves; maybe it’s all the mesh? It used to be popular. 

On Saturday, half the day having escaped him, and another leftover meal disguised as breakfast later he decides to clean the kitchen. Thank Goodness for the dish washing charms he had learnt, otherwise Harry knows there would probably be mould in his sink by now. The counters are all full of jars and bins of ingredients, and some of the cupboard doors are still open. He had been cooking last weekend, trying to make sure Teddy had a big breakfast before his journey and then trying to finish off the food he wanted to send off with him. 

An ten year old Teddy comes to mind, looking horrified at the fact that Hogwarts didn’t have any pizza, didn’t have any of Harry’s bacon sandwiches. Harry’s been sending him off with those ever since. 

He switches on the radio, gets to work, puts things away, closes the cupboards, cleans the sink, wipes down the counters and the table. Neville’s plant is on the table and the room smells…clean. It’s not pleasant - all that scent of detergent and the absence of the smell of a cooked meal; the kitchen hasn’t smelled this way all summer. 

On Sunday, he excuses himself from dinner at The Burrow. He and George go out for a drink instead.

‘Quiet house?’ George asks over the top of his bottle. The stubble looks dark brown in the bar, closer to the colour of his eyes. 

‘Yeah,’ Harry nods, taking a sip of his own drink. 

—

Teddy’s third letter back home is frantic. 

He’s annoyed about quidditch - some new beater that definitely shouldn’t be on the team but is and is now also refusing to try out different techniques. Should he be a purposely bad chaser as an act of protest? Also, Harry should mail him back his sock - and possibly a couple of new pairs, please. Oh! Also! By the way, his necklace that he was obsessed with when he was seven and then never looked at again when he turned eight - could Harry mail that to him too? It’s on his dresser, first drawer, in the corner.

Harry retrieves everything Teddy has asked for from around the house: the sock from the stairs and the new pairs still in the back of his cupboard because he kept forgetting that Harry had put them there. He leaves them in the living room and then spends the evening after work making fudge which he puts in a tin and sets aside to also mail to him. It's nearing midnight when he’s done with everything and then walks back up to Teddy’s bedroom to grab the necklace. At the bedroom door, he realises he may have been putting off collecting it all this time. 

It’s there in his dresser exactly where Teddy had written it would be, and it's still as small and dainty. The chain is silver, almost faded but still eye-catching, and off of it hangs a small black oval. There’s a thin plait of gold around the inside of its circumference. In the middle is a small bouquet of flowers, the string holding them together barely visible around their green stems. Red and yellow tulips bloom at the top, swayed against each other in the most elegant manner. 

It's still as intricately beautiful as the first time Harry had seen it. The colours are all vibrant, the gold regal and the black - the black is hypnotising, and its darkness is so bright. 

It makes sense that it is so glamorous; aristocrats have always had an eye for finer things, have been known to be able to recognise beauty and to acquire it. The Blacks had never been any different, only wryly, Harry thinks, they would have been better off had they applied the same courtesy to people too.

He wraps it in a scarf, and then tucks it in the corner of the box with all of the other things and sends it off with Tether, the stubborn animal, who has been waiting the whole day. Harry smiles watching him fly away; at least Teddy will have a nice morning. 

He tries imagining what it feels like to open a full box in the Great Hall at breakfast. Will it smell like home when Teddy opens it? What does it feel like when a parcel smells like home?

When he goes to bed he dreams of being handed that small pendant again. Pendant. Pallor. Potter .

—

Andromeda begins to complain about bodily pains in late October. 

They’re in the garden, and everything around them is some shade of either orange or brown. On their way to the creaking table and chair in her garden, Harry tried to discreetly spell some of the leaves away. As they walked, the cracking continued to sound loudly still, cheating its way around their voices. 

‘It’s not age,’ Harry argues when Andromeda tells him it is. 

She tilts her head slightly, smiling. ‘I’m-’

‘It’s not age,’ Harry maintains. Dumbledore had never even limped, Professor McGongagall still gracefully lands on her feet after transforming from her animagus form, Molly still commands her kitchen like a dictator, and Arthur can stay bent over the big table in his shed working on whatever muggle-wizard invention he’s created in his head. It’s really not age. 

‘Be that as it may, Harry, I’m pained,’ Andromeda says. 

‘I will get you a potion,’ Harry promises. If not age, then what? ‘I’ll arrange a house call with a healer, you’ve not got any plans this Friday, have you?’

‘What plans do you think I’ll have?’ She asks, eyes squinting.

Harry shrugs. ‘Secret - gardening club?’

‘I am available this coming Friday, Harry.’

‘Great.’

Only, when Friday does arrive, and the healer - Sains - is finished inspecting Andromeda and pulls Harry aside, it does turn out to be related to age. 

‘Magousphlemoni, Mr Potter,’ Healer Sains says. He is incredibly tall, with brown eyes and dark brown hair that also settles on his chin and cheeks. Harry has had to put in a lot of requests for house calls by general Healers, both for Teddy and Andromeda - and occasionally, for Ron when he insisted that his time had come to an end only for it to have been the flu - but he has never seen Hailer Sains before. He had begun to think he was acquainted with all the general Healers St. Mungos had. ‘It’s very common in old age, and it's a case of inflammation of the joints.’

‘I’ve never heard of it,’ Harry tells him. His robes are pristine, familiarly turquoise and creaseless. 

Healer Sains smiles, and levitates his black bag in the air, positioning it to his right. ‘It’s only seen in magical people and amongst the more traditional families it's mostly prevented rather than treated,’ He says. The bag pops open with a sharp click, and out flies a small white jar. ‘Fortunately, treatments are just as effective.’

‘What do you mean it only occurs in magical people?’ Harry asks. 

‘It stems from the magic that is frequented by a person. Suppose there is a spell you use all the time due to your lifestyle - your job, your hobbies, stuff like that. The movement and the magical channelling for that spell become second nature to you,’ He begins to explain. There are three badges on the front of his robes. Purple, green, and blue. ‘But then your lifestyle changes as you grow older - perhaps you retire, or you lose interest in that hobby; you stop using that spell. Only, all the magic we perform leaves a certain residue in our magical signature. For most magic this is overlooked but something practised very frequently adds up over time, and since that movement and channelling aren’t exercised over a long period of time, the residue can sometimes cause tears in the body and the elderly are, of course, more vulnerable to that sort of thing.’

It’s a little too…magical, Harry thinks, and sounds like something that shouldn’t be a real problem. ‘That sounds - complicated.’

Healer Sains lets out a small laugh. ‘If only you were on the Research Advisory Board, Mr Potter,’ He says. Harry looks at him in question. ‘It’s my current area of research - took me three years to convince the board. It’s believed to be a very simple issue, and since treatments are available and we know how to prevent it, most healers don’t quite see the need for further investigation. Not when more rigorous diseases exist.’ 

‘You reckon this calls for more research?’ Harry asks. The blue badge is of a wand crossing through a big red plus sign. The green one is of an animated young wizard laughing and putting his thumb up. The purple one is of a bone, a halo of sparkles around it. 

‘Tread carefully, Mr Potter, or I’ll start talking about my research - bit difficult to get me back on track then,’ He laughs. A neat set of vials flies out of the bag. ‘There is little we know about how exactly the inflammation occurs. Healers understand that magical residue combined with inactivity of magical channeling that used to be frequent is involved, but that’s too simplistic.’

Harry looks at Healer Sains properly. He can imagine him, tall and clean and organised, sitting down at a grey table to read and read and read numerous medicinal and clinical journals, can see him walking around St. Mungos in these very robes talking to different potions, his strides confident and authoritative but in a soft way. 

‘That’s not for you to worry about, though,’ Healer Sains donates since he’s received nothing but a long stare from Harry. ‘Will Mrs Tonks be administering the treatment herself, or will you? It’s nothing complicated - a daily ointment and a potion taken every other day.’

‘Er - yeah - herself, I think, I don’t live here,’ Harry says and watches him nod and head back into the living room where Andromeda is waiting. He waits a minute and then he joins the both of them. 

—

‘Magousphlemoni?’ Molly repeats incredulously as she turns around to face him. ‘Andy - Really?’

Harry nods and offers her a shrug. 

Molly wipes her hands on her apron and sets down two cups on the table, and sits across from him. ‘You wouldn’t think someone like her would get it.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’s from a wizarding family - grew up in the wizarding world,’ Molly points out. ‘Those of us like that know how to prevent it. It’s quite like washing your hands before you eat to make sure you don’t get sick.’

‘Yeah, the healer said but,’ Harry trails off. Healer Sains had said traditional families prevented rather than treated . The Blacks were as traditional as it got.

‘Not to worry, dear,’ Molly follows quickly. ‘I’m sure the healer explained - it’s nothing serious at all. Easily treated.’

Harry takes a sip of his tea. It’s Tuesday afternoon, and he’s on his lunch break. It’s only Molly in the house - Arthur is at work, and it has been years since one of her own kids has been in the burrow during a weekday afternoon. 

‘I know,’ Harry says. ‘I wonder why she didn’t - how she forgot.’

Molly’s smile is sympathetic. The both of them know how easy it is to forget about things like these now, and there’s little doubt that in their minds that magousphlemoni probably felt a rather pointless concern to Andromeda had she ever even remembered the risk of it. 

‘Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,’ Harry confesses. ‘It’s about Teddy, actually.’

‘Oh,’ Molly says. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘I think so,’ Harry says and crosses his arms on the table. ‘Only, in the summer when he came back, he didn’t spend the night at Andromeda’s. Just said he’d rather not - and I - I don’t know why.’

Molly blinks and continues to stare; Harry realises she’s waiting for more information. 

He shakes his head. ‘I was just worried. I don’t know why - it’s never been a problem.’

Molly laughs. ‘Oh, is that it, dear?’ She says, her eyes crinkling. ‘He’s fourteen now, isn’t he - bless him. It’s very normal, Harry, sometimes kids don’t want to stay over at their grandparents.’ 

She stands up and collects her cup, Harry remembers to continue to drink his tea. ‘Really?’

‘Bill was awful about it one year,’ Molly tells him. ‘Just wanted to stay in his room or go out with his friends. Everything else was just too boring.’

‘Are you sure?’ Harry asks. He tries to imagine Molly’s parents - or Arthur’s - doting on and caring for the Weasley kids in the same way that Molly and Athur coddled Rose and Victoire and Teddy. He imagines a house similar to the Burrow, and a creek and pigs and chickens and gnomes and he can’t imagine why Bill wouldn’t have wanted to go. ‘Is that bad? Should I talk to him?’

‘It’s nothing to worry about, it’s quite normal, Harry,’ Molly tries to get him to understand. ‘You can talk to him if you’d like - have a word, maybe. But it’s not a bad thing, sometimes children need a bit of a break too.’

Harry thinks of George not showing up to Sunday dinners, thinks that George isn’t a bad person because of that. 

Harry finishes his tea, kisses Molly’s cheek and tells her he will see her on Sunday, and heads back to his store. While working on a pair of dragonskin boots that had been cursed to trip the wearer every time they took a step near a dirty surface, he remembers Dudley throwing a tantrum about not wanting to visit Uncle Vernon’s parents.

Harry figures out how to remove the curse and then busies himself with scrubbing the boots clean. Tries scrubbing out any comparisons between Teddy and Dudley from his mind. 

—

The weather begins to get even colder, the winds turn harsher. The trees are naked by now, the water has cooled, and the birds have all flown away by now.

Harry’s always muttering a warming charm or a heating charm. Hermione and Ron are always rushing after Rose - who has now learned to wobble around very fast - with a beanie or mittens or a scarf or another jumper. 

Teddy’s written to tell him he’s caught the flu but that Madame Pomfrey is taking good care of him. Harry makes a lot of chicken soup and then sends it off with Tether (after a lot of stasis and a shrinking charm). Then, he finds Teddy’s scarf in the back of his own cupboard and mails that to him demanding to know what Teddy has been doing all this time walking around in Scotland’s cold without a scarf? Teddy writes back saying he simply bought one in Hogsmeade when he realised he forgot it at home - and why was his scarf in Harry’s cupboard anyway? 

Truly, Harry can’t remember so he lets it go. 

The orders at the shop begin piling again and the sound of the bell, at the top of the door, ringing grows to become even more frequent. At some point, Harry reconsiders having kept the stupid bell after having hired Loic.

‘It’s getting busy again, Mr Potter,’ Loic sighs one evening. They’re about to close, and a witch has just left after having spent upwards of twenty minutes explaining the significance and value of the earrings she was handing over to Loic. It got a bit ridiculous when it was nearing half an hour and her eyes were beginning to get misty and she had just started on an ‘Auntie Margaret and her beau’ so Harry had stepped out of the workshop - where her voice had penetrated into easily - to assure her that he would personally make sure that nothing happened to the precious earrings. 

‘It’s because everyone’s starting to remember they don’t have stuff sorted for Christmas,’ Harry tells him. ‘I mean, some of these repairs can take a week, really, it would help if everyone was more organised. Don’t know how we manage to return everything in time every year, but we’ll manage all the same, I suppose.’

‘I take it that means you’re ahead of all your Christmas planning then?’ Loic grins.

December has only just started, and Celestina Warbeck’s songs have returned to every single radio channel. It’s the most frequent voice he hears.

Harry scoffs. ‘Of course I am,’ He says, which is technically true. He’s only waiting for Teddy’s response to what he would like for Christmas, but he’s had the gift he wants to give him wrapped and put away in the back of his cupboard for weeks now. He only has to buy something for everyone else, which won’t be too difficult and won’t require much effort. He’ll find a nice day and do it all on his lunch break. ‘What are your plans for Christmas then?’

Loic closes the registers and it clings. He looks up and smiles brightly. ‘My girlfriend and I are going to France.’

‘Are you?’ Harry asks, straightening up. 

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised; Loic and his girlfriend are awfully…close. Every February that Harry has had him, Loic’s been worried the first few weeks in adamant planning of some gesture or some gift and has had his efforts reciprocated equally too. He recalls a rather huge chocolate heart having been delivered to the shop that year, with Loic’s name and a copious amount of loving proclamations on the card attached. She - Jenna - also made it a point to waltz in at least once every two weeks and stand at the counter, elbows on the wood, to lean over and kiss a Loic. Once Harry had walked in - or out since they had been at the front of the shop - on an incredibly heated embrace and she had only raised one eyebrow and said, ‘He doesn’t mind, do you Mr Potter?’ while Loic reddened even as he attempted to lean back coolly. Harry would mind but both Jenna and Loic were still very young, as young as Harry wishes he could be. They were both still training, Jenna as a healer and Loic as an astronomer, and probably only had enough money for their rent, meals and a date or two combined, but something about their lives was incredibly desirable to Harry. 

‘Been planning it for months,’ Loic grins. ‘Our mums aren’t too happy - Christmas away from the family and all, but you only get one life, don’t you?’

Harry smiles back and nods. 

Loic finishes tidying up the front of the store while Harry returns to sort out his office. A lot of the parcels that have come in today need to be moved into the workshop, and sets them by the door to do so the morning after. He clears his desk, dumping all of the mail in a basket to sort through tomorrow, and empties the bin of coffee cups and chocolate wrappers. The stupid, bloody, precious earrings are placed in the small drawer of his desk so he can stay true to his word.

When he floos back home, he’s a bit worn out and immediately heads to the kitchen to get something to eat. The food he had bought the day before is still leftover - a box of pizza with about four rather sad slices, but good enough - and he warms them up and eats them in the living room. 

He makes his tea, like he does every night but promises himself every morning he won’t do again because it really troubles his sleep, and carries it up to his bedroom and sets it on his bedside. He washes his face, brushes his teeth, changes out of his clothes and is about to collapse onto his bed when he notices the outline of a couple of envelopes on his desk. 

Harry groans as he collects them, and sits down on his bed, feet sliding under the covers. The owls ought to deliver these in the living room or the kitchen, and he’s always found it frustrating how they end up in his bedroom instead. All of Molly and Arthur’s mail is always received in the living room - it was only ever the kids that got theirs in their bedrooms. Harry is not a kid anymore. 

There’s a letter from Ron about going to see the Quidditch match between the Chudley Cannons and the Puddlemere United, something about Ginny having gotten them tickets. Then he spots the letter from Ginny, and two tickets slide out of the envelope. She’s wishing him an early happy christmas. He smiles fondly when he opens Teddy letter telling him that he feels better now, thanking him for the soup, James and Henry have detention for a week because they snuck out after curfew to see him when he was in the infirmary, and Ravenclaw have won the first inter-house match and their next game is against Gryffindor when they come back after Christmas. On the back of the letter is the list of things he would like for Christmas - finally, Harry thinks.

The new Snakehead trainers (the SN50s, they’re black with three yellow lines on the side)

A muggle camera

Those weird chocolates you bought once (the ones that were kinda round, kinda square and had that shiny, strawberry filling)

Permission to drink firewhiskey on Christmas  

There’s a cheeky note at the bottom: And anything else you think your wonderful, amazing, spectacular godson is worthy of. 

Harry feels excited as he remembers, again, what he has picked out for Teddy, himself. He knows Teddy will love it. He puts Teddy’s letter in the drawer of his bedside with the tickets for the match, and reaches for the last envelope, and finds the Hogwarts emblem staring at him from a red wax seal. 

He’s tearing it open immediately in fear that there is something wrong with Teddy. Sitting up in bed, one leg already out, his brain can only push out desperate images of Teddy hurt or sick and worry ceases his entire body for a minute. His movements slow down as he begins to read, heart returning to normal when he hadn’t even noticed he had begun to breathe so fast. 

To 
Mr Potter

The staff at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry hope you are well. 

This letter is in regards to the performance of EDWARD REMUS LUPIN. I would like to sit down and have a discussion with you about the academic progress of the above-mentioned student.
Following are the dates and times where I’m available; kindly select one that you are amenable to and reply by owl with your selection.
I look forward to having a productive discussion, and would appreciate your cooperation. 

Best regards,
Draco Malfoy,
Professor of Defence Against the Dark Arts.

Harry scrambles out of bed, picks the first day and time - day after tomorrow, two ‘o’ clock - he finds that suits him and then stops. There’s no owl. He groans out loud in the silence of his room. 

He’s never regretted not having bought an owl - not when Hermione bothered him about it, not when Ron had exhausted the topic, not when Molly said it was much more economical to own one rather than renting one. However, nothing had ever demanded such urgency before either. 

Luckily, the Ministry’s Rent-an-Owl service operates 24/7 in consideration of such urgent matters. He runs down to the fireplace, requests an owl, rushes back up and waits for it to arrive. It’s a dreadfully familiar process, but again, he’s never waited so desperately. 

When it does arrive, a brown barn owl, looking all curious and pecky, Harry throws a few owl treats on his desk for him to nibble at while he puts the small slip into an envelope and scrawls down the name he’s been wanting to write on parchment for years now. Has only managed to do it once before. 

When the owl takes off, the Ministry’s ‘M’ hanging shining on the small metal ring around its leg, its wings flapping silently in the night, Harry’s mind can’t pick what to think about.

What about Teddy’s progress? In Defence Against the Dark Arts of all things too? Why hadn’t Teddy said anything? Or should he think about the subject’s professor? What he’s doing? How he thought about Harry when writing the letter? Harry wonders what image conjures up in Draco’s head when he thinks of Harry? Whether he has seen the small shots of Harry that the Prophet or Witch Weekly manage to publish every few months? Does he know how close in proximity he is to Harry when he teaches Teddy? Does he remember their last correspondence?

A meagre Dear Draco, I’m sorry for what I said to you. Don’t think I even knew the meaning of what I was babbling. I really am sorry, didn’t mean it.

Goodness knows Harry still thinks of the equally short response he had received. Simply, Harry, your apology is appreciated - and readily accepted. He’s repeated in his head over and over, trying to twist that posh accent to pronounce the words. He’s repeated it out loud having gotten frustrated over the brevity of it all. Now, Harry wonders about how to think of this letter? 

His tea is left untouched but he still sleeps dreadfully. The day after is agonisingly slow and all he can think about is how he will be perceived come two ‘o’ clock on Wednesday. 

At 1:59, Harry’s standing at the floo in his office. He’s told Loic he will be gone for a while. He reminds himself that this is for Teddy and his ‘progress’ - whatever that means - in Defence Against the Dark Arts. And then he floos through.